Afghanistan Diary: Mapping the Human Terrain in Helmand, Part I

After over a month of heavy fighting in Garmsir district, southern
Helmand province, Marines of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit settled down to the tedious routines of counterinsurgency.
They carried out a census in the surrounding villages – “mapping the human terrain,”
they call it – and started conducting security patrols. Contact with the enemy was sporadic: the occasional “pop shot” with small arms or
RPG fire or roadside bomb. One of the Marines’ hulking Mine-Resistant,
Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles was hit by what was described to me as “a little baby IED” but other, potentially deadlier, devices had been discovered, like double-stacked antitank mines.

On a late August evening, I tagged along with a rifle platoon on a patrol of one of the villages. At the point of departure, Sergeant Samuel Grammer’s voice crackled over the radio:
“Mitchell, did you bring flex cuffs?”

Kicking up a small cloud of dust, Grammer strolled back out of the compound. He was carrying two pairs of plastic cuffs. “Change of plans,”
he said. Instead of walking a security patrol around the neighboring village, the squad was supposed to detain a suspected insurgent.

Grammer gave the description of the suspect: “Five foot eight, mid twenties, short beard.”

The squad erupted with laughter.

“He’ll stick out like a sore thumb out there…”

“That cuts it down to about three hundred.”

The village was crisscrossed by irrigation canals, the remnants of a USAID project in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
This place was once the focal point of U.S. development programs during the Cold War. More recently, it had been a Taliban stronghold, and its lushly irrigated fields provided fertile ground for opium poppy.
Villagers watched the squad impassively.

By the time the squad reached their objective, the sun had set. The suspect was supposed to be staying in a squat, mud-brick house owned by a local elder. Grammer knocked at the gate; a few men emerged. Speaking through an interpreter, the squad leader questioned a few men outside the compound, while Marines kept a wary eye on a man puttering along on a scooter on the opposite side of the canal.

The suspect wasn’t home; neither was his host. Welcome to southern Afghanistan: No fixed addresses, no ID cards, no functioning local government, no cell phone network. Just a lot of legwork. As the squad trudged back, Mitchell said, “That’s like the description we get of everyone: five foot eight, short beard, wearing a turban. Half that village looks like that.”

Hence the “human terrain mapping.” As part of the census, the Marines also took photographs of local leaders; they created map overlays that show tribal affiliations; poppy growing areas; and attitudes toward the coalition.

In the Army, the Human Terrain System employs social scientists and researchers who conduct field research and advise brigade commanders. The program has been gathering momentum; a new piece in the Kansas City Star suggests that Human Terrain Teams may be showing up next in Africa or Latin America. The MEU does not have a formal Human Terrain Team – embedded sociologists or anthropologists – but it seems to have taken to the business of human intelligence collection. Tomorrow, I’ll take a look at how the MEU’s approach to human terrain differs from the more formal Army program.